Diets and Dietary Supplements in Autism Therapies

If you are seeking out potential treatments for Autism, then it is important to consider all of your options, and that includes both conventional treatments that your Doctor might recommend, as well as alternative therapies.

Whilst at first it may appear that diet and dietary supplements would slot firmly into the latter category, the fact is that the role that food plays in affecting mood and interactivity has long been documented and so can play an essential part in any autism treatment regime.

Similarly with dietary supplements there are some compelling studies into how consuming certain supplements can affect behavior in people suffering from autism. While there is currently scant peer reviewed scientific studies into this at present, there are many supplements that have compelling enough anecdotal evidence to make them worth trying.

Here are three ways that Diet and Dietary Supplements may play a role in Autism Therapies:

1/ High Doses of Vitamin B6 in Conjunction with Magnesium

Certain studies have put forward evidence that there may be a link between a combination of high doses of magnesium and Vitamin B6, and the alleviation of the symptoms of autism. However, it must be said that this falls firmly into the bracket of “not fully tested” because there hasn’t yet been a large-scale study undertaken to conclusively prove the link.

This may however be an area that is worthy of further investigation, and you may wish to consult with your Doctor about this.

2/ High Doses of Vitamin C

It is amazing how many times you hear Vitamin C crop up as a potential treatment option for just about everything, and autism is no exception. There was one study carried out in 1993 which suggested that taking high doses of Vitamin C could lead to “decreased stereotyped behavior” in autistic patients.

However, there has again not been a big study commissioned to corroborate this finding, and so once more the causal link remains anecdotal at best.

3/ Eliminating Gluten and Casein from the Diet

It has been reported that eliminating both Gluten and Casein from the diets of Autism sufferers improves both verbal skills and social engagement. The reason for this is because one of the proposed causes of autism is opioid peptides, which can be produced by our bodies, and which bind to receptors in the brain. Gluten and Casein are precursors of these and so lowering the intake of these substances also has the knock on effect of lowering the amount of opioid peptides that are produced in the body.

Again, there is no conclusive evidence to back this conjecture up as yet, but if you look around the web then you will find many compelling stories from sufferer’s families which attest to the fact that eliminating both Gluten and Casein from the diet of an autism sufferer, did, in fact, have an effect.At the present time there are no definitive dietary supplements or diet change treatments for Autism that definitely work for all sufferers, but keeping an eye out for Herbal Supplements and Dietary interventions that have helped some people is certainly a good idea.

It seems likely that over the next 20 years this will be an area of considerable discovery and hope for people who suffer with autism.